Dream On .....

The Ministry of Agriculture Fisheries and Food , if it still exists , entrusts me with certain responsibilities. Initially I am tasked with quarantining a number of heifers and dosing them with some medicine known as Drench via their heels of all places. This is a messy business , but accompanied by a couple of hansome pathologists in suits from the Home Office , not one that is beyond me. Indeed I am pleased to have new challenges , my responsibilities latterly having tended to the mundane.
There is also a series of new sheds to be inspected including various pens and heating devices and much paperwork to be processed , involving the conversion of currency for an international trasaction and that is beyond me despite my First in Social Statistics. Luckliy a stable hand is at my elbow to talk me through the process. Thus in dreams is it ever as in life !

Silence

Today after some twenty six or twenty seven days , I refuse to count them properly , there is the most amazing silence in my head . The silence that is the absence of pain and the noise that goes with pain . Migraine pain looks like sparkles and fireworks and zigzag lines and it creates a noise all of its own , incessant and coloured. I retreat into my own kind of misery , often into sleep but even sleep is no sanctuary . The noise can find its way into the deepest of dreams , worming its way in until you ache for a way out through a heavier medication .
So , twenty six days , many of them snow filled and with brilliant white lights outside adding to the pain . There has been sancutuary . Holidays . The ability to retreat from the world because of the weather .
But the relief of the silence today is beyond the description of words. The room is quiet . There is a complete nothingness in my head , a sensation of the falling of flakes of snow as an alternative to the frenzy of the past days .
Long may it last .

We have minus 8 on the beach

Alice trials her new coat from Silver Peacock .Silver Peacock - Handmade Greyhound, Whippet, Lurcher Long Neck Coats

16 year old dies

Whilst we are kind of revelling in the heavy snow falls and wondering just how long it can go on , we hear the news that a 16 year old in the year above Nat at school ( now at college ) has been killed on the roads just near Scotch Corner . Travelling with his mother by car it lost control and they left the car to go to safety but were hit by a waggon . JakeYouTube - That kid jake .. Dance Freestyle - Real talk-Outlaws was killed and his mother is critically ill . Jake was a dancer.

The school remains open .

8000 schools closed ...

....but our local remains open.
Nat scoured the schools website last night and the information remained the same . Almost all schools in the area closed bar hers, and indeed by 8 30 am this morning the information was getting worse . A text message arrived on my mobile which finally tipped things over the edge and profanities were utteredat high pitch..... " M***** High School is closed to years blah blah blah and blah but open to years ten and eleven today ".

I ushered her out of the front door reminding her of her responsibility to attend etc and headed back upstairs .

The dog spat out a mouth full of wet tissue as I entered the bedroom and sank down guiltily onto the duvet. The tissue box disintegrated beneath her in a wet flop. Caught up in the general air of tension and excitement she had slipped upstairs and engaged in her own private massacre. Shouting and barking not her strong suit but paper and card ripping in seconds her best game .

Big Fat telly

For yonks I have been resistant to the idea of those things that most men seem to long for , namely a Big Fat telly with a Big Fat Plasma Screen that they can glue themselves to and Watch other men kick balls at .
Mainly I have been resistant for reasons that make perfect sense to me , but not apparently to anyone else , namely that we have several perfectly good tellies , spread about the other rooms in the house , one in most of the rooms where people congregate or sleep ( though I have always refused to have one near where I myself sleep) and an extra one for good measure just in case. Since tellies do blow up with alarming frequency most of ours now seem to be of the required flat screen variety too , though of late the cry " but they are not Plasma" has become an issue , whatever this means ( nothing much to me, fortunately, since I now earn less and less) and I see people scanning my expression for signs of change when I am confronted with such examples in John Lewis or indeed glancing through their friends' windows.

But , despite today starting much as usual , at six am with a pot of coffee and a fairytale four inches of snow , it ends in defeat .
I CatCall on foot and all is well with the world . Indeed Star and Pip seem to know their family is back today and come down with me to help me wash up and prepare their food for the first visit of the fortnight , Pip happily pottering and Star moodily standing blocking the exit to the cat flap .The snow falls fatly outside and I watch wondering how the roads will be . I have left my car at home as the slush has frozen solid .
Later , after Alice makes it plain she is not keen to go far , D disappears and I know my time is up . I head off again on foot , and when I return an hour later , with a few pathetic paperbacks from the library , there intruding into the room is a 32 inch biggin . My feeble protest is lost .

Mainly on Foot

.. This morning I am mainly CatCalling on foot .

I wake at six am and the the New Year's Day silence is not just about holidays and lack of traffic down below.
Click on the photo directly above and you can see the cat hiding from the fox who was a few yards away at midnight.

For those asking , D is at home , better , but still with some pain and waiting for some tests (next week after the holidays).

Happy New Year everyone !